


the year of the knife

by theexistentiallyqueer



Category: Persona 5
Genre: (but it's mutual), Akechi Goro Attends Shujin Academy, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Blackmail, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Implied/Referenced Sexual Harassment, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, POV Multiple, Rating May Change, Shujin Academy (Persona 5), Shujin Akechi Goro AU, Student Council Vice-President Akechi Goro, more tags to be added as needed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:46:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28102653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theexistentiallyqueer/pseuds/theexistentiallyqueer
Summary: The plan for Akira's junior year of high school was to keep his head down and his nose clean, but he hadn't counted on his new high school having more trouble than it was worth--and he specifically didn't plan on Akechi Goro, the haughty, machiavellian vice president of Shujin Academy's student council, dragging him face-first into political scandal and a series of encounters that would change his life.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 94
Kudos: 192





	1. bird's opening

**Author's Note:**

> I know Shrike is on hiatus! Yes I'm launching this anyway! Please don't judge me.
> 
> I promise I have this one like 75% of the way plotted out first, at least. I know the ending and all. Pinky swear.
> 
> Title from the song by Tears for Fears:
> 
> _too late for the young gun  
>  to lead a simple life  
> too late for the young gun I said  
> this is the year of the knife, this is the year of the knife_

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pawn to E3.  
> Knight to G3.  
> Bishop to A5.  
> Rook to H4.  
> Queen to E7.
> 
> Checkmate in eleven.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Criticize my chess-move references and I will knife you. ꒰(@｀꒳´)꒱

_This story is a work of fiction._

_Similarities between characters or events to persons living or dead in your world are purely coincidental._

_Only those who have agreed to the above have the privilege of partaking in this game._

* * *

The principal's office is too compact for such a broad man, the furniture a touch too ostentatious for such an unimpressive one. It's always struck Goro that Kobayakawa is something of a toad: large and drab and ugly, full of air and prone to bluster, but ultimately less predator, more prey. A weak link at the end of a long, long chain that a particularly shrewd metallurgist could unspool until reaching its source deep in the heart of Chiyoda and, with one sharp yank, topple the house of cards therein.

Goro follows the president into the office, two steps behind her lead in deference to her right of office, and closes the door politely behind them. The semi-acrid, semi-sweet odor of cigar smoke lingers in the air; Goro, long accustomed to unpleasant things intruding on his senses, ignores it, and soon it fades into the background. He sees Niijima wrinkle her nose minutely at the smell, trying not to show her displeasure, and Goro presses his lips together to suppress a smile. He has a silent one-sided bet waged on whether she'll firm up her spine before graduating, and so far she doesn't seem to be on track to win.

"You asked for us, sir?" Niijima asks in her perfect _please-refer-me-to-a-good-college_ voice, smoothing out the pleats of her skirt. Goro stands beside her at diffident attention.

Kobayakawa blinks up at them from the sprawl of paperwork on his desk, the spidery handwriting impossible to read upside-down from this distance. "Oh, yes," he says, hurrying to tuck whatever he's reading away. No matter; either it's something Goro's already been over or he'll find it on his next furtive inspection of the office. The principal is less cautious than he should be, holding onto incriminating paperwork for longer than he ought, and he's nearly as far from clever as it's possible to get: Goro has found all five of his hidey-holes already.

Goro smiles. "It's no trouble. The student council exists to serve the school, after all."

He can feel Niijima's eyes boring into him in a sideways glare. She hates it when he plays up the dogged boy scout routine, which of course only makes him want to do it more.

"Yes," the principal says, and then, "hm, well then," and then he's passing two nondescript manila files across his desk to them. Niijima takes one and hands Goro the other. Goro flicks it open.

The first thing to catch his attention is a shock of bright red, hair falling like a curtain around a down-turned, pale face. It's a photo of a girl clipped to a slim packet of papers: profile, application, entrance exam scores, letters of recommendation, tuition statements, scholarship agreement--a student file. A new student given that Goro doesn't recognize her--and indeed, the profile notes the girl is a first year. _Yoshizawa Sumire_ , he reads, rifling through the papers, and then with a jolt of pleasant surprise, noting that she is a not-unaccomplished gymnast.

_Well._ Kamoshida certainly won't like that. And isn't that a delightful thought?

And the girl's father works at--

Beside him, Niijima makes a distressed little whine. "Sir? This can't be right."

Goro slides his gaze sideways. He can't make out the contents of her file from the angle she's holding it at, but he holds his hand out and she passes it to him wordlessly. He takes it, trading her the Yoshizawa girl's file in exchange, curiosity buzzing at the edges of his awareness.

"A new school year means fresh new faces," the principal says. "I'd like for the both of you to keep an eye on these two. Give them a firm, guiding hand."

The second file is more interesting than the first, notable for what it lacks rather than what it doesn't. First, no application. No scholarship, no awards, no commendations; not even a whiff of a single extracurricular activity. Only a transfer order, a transcript of one year of grades--and, most interestingly, a disciplinary record of expulsion.

> _In light of the student's reckless behavior and injury towards a fellow citizen, the school regrettably has no course of action other than to terminate the student's enrollment._

Goro flips back to the first page. The photo is of a boy, unassuming, with black hair that curls with too much style to be called unruly. His expression neutral--smiling may not be allowed in student portraits, but some aspect of the subject's personality typically shines through, in the pinch of a brow or the curl of a mouth, and yet this boy's expression is blank, devoid of tells, a perfect poker face--all but for the eyes.

Slate grey, storm grey, blade-of-a-hunter's-knife grey. Grey turning silver like the barrel of a gun. So sharp they could cut you.

_Kurusu Akira_ , the name below the photo reads.

_What a story this must be_ , Goro thinks, but his mind is a clock and the gears, they are turning. That thought is immediately followed by another.

_Pawn to E3._

The principal continues speaking. Goro stands at rapt attention and listens carefully to every word.

* * *

When they're safely back in the privacy of the student council room, Niijima slumps forward onto a desk and buries her face in her hands. "I can't believe he just dropped that us without any kind of warning," she moans.

Goro hums in sympathy from where he's leaning against a wall, gaze falling aimlessly out the windows onto the small shapes of other students scurrying about their after hours. When he was little he used to like watching ants crawl their measured way across the ground; people-watching isn't any different, really. Their humdrum activities; their doldrum fun. In the back of his mind tiny sparks catch fire and give off smoke.

Two students amongst the sea of new faces that flood the school at the start of a new year, two that the principal felt incumbent upon himself to point out in specificity. A peek behind the curtains, administrative files and all. The girl something, her father maybe a something more, and the boy--

Goro buries the impulse to tug off a glove and chew on his thumbnail. Any weather vain in a tsunami.

"Not to rehash old arguments, but it would be remiss of me not to bring this up yet again," Goro says, turning his eyes away from the morse-code lines of people on the school grounds. "If you think that the administration of this school regards us as individuals rather than resources, you are setting yourself up for failure."

Niijima's shoulders pinch inwards before she lets out a breath. Sighs, thumb and index finger of her right hand coming up to pinch the bridge of her nose. "I know. I don't need you to say it again."

Goro's smile is so beatific, angels would happily disembowel themselves if he asked them very nicely. "I would certainly prefer not to have to."

"Right." She huffs out a breath, annoyed but marginally grateful by inches. She sits up and squares her shoulders. " _Right_."

Goro turns fully in her direction, crossing both arms across his chest. The movement makes his suspenders shift uncomfortably beneath his blazer; he ignores them. "Come to a decision?"

Niijima turns to meet his gaze and there it is, the fire she keeps banked roughly ninety-eight percent of the time. She'd be entirely too tolerable if she let that show more often.

"Two of them and two of us," she says, always one for the comforting simplicity of basic arithmetic. "Which one do you want?"

Goro thinks on it. Weighs his options. The girl would almost certainly be useful. An athlete, which means using her could keep Kamoshida in check, which would benefit his investigation into the principal, and more than that there's the matter of her father: the tv studio at Akatsuka-Mitsuke has connections to the target he's aiming for in his crosshairs. Connections that could bear fruit in plenty. And yet.

Sometimes Goro has fantasies about knives. About cutting. He has no practical experience with either subject, outside of botched cooking attempts, home ec classes, and school-monitored animal dissections, but he knows the rough whats, hows, and whens. In his fantasies there are even questionable whys.

When Goro was seven years old, two years before his mother killed herself, she brought home a man. It could have been any man, it could be any man, it might be any man--there were too many and Goro didn't keep count.

_That's not the issue._

This man taught Goro how to play poker. The only card games he'd known up until that point had been fifty-two pick-up and go-fish. Over the span of three nights this man had taught Goro about stakes, and flushes, and betting, and pairs. Last, but certainly not least, he'd taught Goro about dealer's choice. Sometimes one thing can be anything else all at once. Much later, Goro had read about Schrodinger's cat: alive or dead until you opened the box Pandora left for you to find out whether or not hope had finally shriveled up and died.

He's always liked wild cards and the wild unknown their zeroes hold. Magic numbers: frustrating and beguiling all at once.

"Splitting it by gender makes it fair," Goro says, rolling the words across his tongue as they leave his mouth. "And likewise it would be easier that way. Wouldn't you agree?"

_Justification, maybe. Besides. Besides besides._

"That does make a certain amount of sense." Niijima's reply is cautious, tiptoeing through shallow water.

_Knight to G3._

"Well," she finally says, sounding just the least bit resentful. "Have it your way."

And isn't it fair? Because these days, Goro always does.

* * *

> [ _encrypted session_ ]  
>  **alibaba:** good evening my lil pogchamp  
>  **grey pidgeot:** Can you please stop calling me that?  
>  **alibaba:** can't shan't won't  
>  **alibaba:** did u have a gud day at school lil pogboy  
>  **grey pidgeot:** It was like any other day  
>  **grey pidgeot:** pog _boy_?  
>  **grey pidgeot:** Never you mind, I refuse to know  
>  **grey pidgeot:** Also, it's 2 am  
>  **alibaba:** time is a social construct  
>  **grey pidgeot:** So are you, technically speaking

Goro drags his gaze away from the shining brightness of his phone screen, shuttering his eyes to block out the light as best he can.

It would certainly be preferable if Alibaba had a coherent schedule, whether for sleep, life, or simply daily autonomous movement. Sometimes they message him during chemistry; other times they message him at a time when the only ones awake should be the dying and the dead.

Goro hasn't slept through the night for--years. Don't ask him to qualify, he couldn't if he wanted to; the more time you lose to sleep, the less you remember the bloodhounds baying at your heels. The first message he'd received from Alibaba had referenced this fact, along with detailed logs of his internet search history

He's still not sure who they are or what they want, which is dangerous in its own right, but they've proven a utility beyond measure since their association began. Goro has covered more ground in the past six months than he has over the three years that preceded them. He's getting closer to something tangible, he can _feel_ it. What's waiting for him at the end is the bone-deep satisfaction of a wrecking ball collision. _A shame there's no grave for him to grovel in front of, but what use is righteous satisfaction to the dead?_

His thoughts are starting to spiral dangerously. Goro checks the time on his phone. 2:49 AM. Shit. He's not getting any more sleep tonight. Resigned, he tabs back to his conversation with Alibaba.

> [ _encrypted session_ ]  
>  **grey pidgeot:** I need you to look into something  
>  **grey pidgeot:** someone, rather  
>  **alibaba:** what? sorry? i can't hear you it's 3 am  
>  **alibaba:** dont interrupt my beauty sleep im baby  
>  **grey pidgeot:** We both know you're never asleep at this hour  
>  **alibaba:** yeah :(  
>  **alibaba:** ok shoot  
>  **grey pidgeot:** There's a new piece on the board  
>  **grey pidgeot:** A transferstudent  
>  **grey pidgeot:** Kurusu Akira  
>  **grey pidgeot:** let me know what you can find  
>  **alibaba:** rodger dodger  
>  **alibaba:** oh  
>  **alibaba:** huh  
>  **alibaba:** well that's interesting  
>  **grey pidgeot:** what?  
> ( _alibaba is typing . . ._ )

The last notification hovers at the bottom of his app before falling away. Goro draws his brows together and frowns.

> **alibaba:** nothin  
>  **alibaba:** sorry something weird came up on another screen

Bull _shit_. Alibaba is a terrible liar, but there's nothing Goro can do to force an honest answer they don't want to give.

> **alibaba:** kurusu akira b 10/8/99 h 175 cm w 62.6 kg bt o  
>  **alibaba:** geez this kid's hometown is in the sticks  
>  **alibaba:** current address is in yongen  
>  **grey pidgeot:** Something useful, please?  
>  **grey pidgeot:** Why was he expelled from his previous school?  
>  **alibaba:** yeah yeah yeah hold please  
>  **alibaba:** holy moly noburoni  
>  **alibaba:** this kid's got an assault charge? y i k e s  
>  **grey pidgeot:** Can you get the court transcript?  
>  **alibaba:** psh who the hell do you think i am?  
>  **grey pidgeot:** You have yet to make that clear, exactly  
>  **alibaba:** wutevs  
>  **alibaba:** otw  
> ( _alibaba has sent 2016-JP29-0004.pdf_ )

Goro downloads the file and settles in to read. Nothing like parsing legalese at four in the morning.

The victim's name is suspiciously redacted. The judge, however...another link in the chain.

_Bishop to A5._

He'll need to have a word with Mishima about his new classmate this afternoon.

* * *

"All rise," Okumura calls out, her voice clear and fluting. The class rises to attention as one.

"Bow," Okumura says, and every student dips forward thirty degrees towards the teacher's lectern.

"Be seated," Okumura says, and with a not-quite-silent exhale, the sound of chairs scraping over the floor fills the air as the class sits back down.

Followed then by the dubious pleasure of Hiruta listening to himself talk for the next fifty minutes; the words go in Goro's one ear and out the other.

Shujin Academy has a reputation for academic excellence, and it certainly lives up enough to that reputation in that it's leaps above the shit-tier public schools Goro has attended his whole life. There are better schools in the city, other schools Goro had weighed carefully against one another like an alchemist carefully appraising which lead formation will transmute into the purest gold. Ultimately Shujin had the full-ride scholarship--and, more importantly, Shujin had the one thread that might lead him to his driving goal.

Still, even an excellent school has its hits and its misses. Quality is unfixed, mutable and ever-changing, and in a social environment, it's the politics that define the dynamic that defines who, if anyone, is able to cross the finish line. Not capital _P_ Politics--that is, not the stuff of polities and electorates. Little p, lower case, Merriam-Webster definition 5a: _the total complex of relations between people living in a society_.

More specifically: power.

More specifically still: who has it and who doesn't.

The gym teacher, Goro had learned during his first year, was new, had only been at Shujin for two years before then; his pet project, the school's up-and-coming volleyball team, an ascendant shining star. Goro had listened to the whispers, wondered inanely at one point if maybe he should join, but the more he sat and watched and waited and listened, the more disconcerted he'd become. The new gym teacher was a bully, one with plenty of muscle to flex, and if Goro had learned anything from his years in and out of the system, from the group homes and the foster homes and the broken, empty homes, it was that a big bully with a big stick could make it very difficult for the little fish to swim by. 

The more balanced things are, the more options a person has. It serves best to keep the scales even. Goro needs the scales even if he's going to get what he wants, so he positioned himself as a counterweight.

A very effective one, as it's turned out in the long run.

The bell rings, interrupting Hiruta mid-sentence. Next comes Japanese, followed by calculus, followed by social studies, and then finally it's lunch. Goro lets out a sigh of relief and tries to leave before he's interrupted--

"Akechi-kun?" Okumura's voice again, bell-like, lilting. Smiling uncertainly, the edges of her mouth turning down into a frown of concern.

Goro stops short at the classroom door, one hand reaching for the handle, and buries his instinctual flicker of annoyance. He doesn't mind Okumura, and it's certainly not her fault that her timing is simply inconvenient. They work together well as the class representatives. She reminds him of himself sometimes, the way she's so doll-like on the outside with the well-concealed whisper of sharp edges underneath. On any given day he wouldn't mind spending his lunch in her company on the school roof, but today he has business.

"Sorry," he says shortly with a subdued smile. "Student council business. Tomorrow, maybe?"

She doesn't believe him, because somehow she can always tell when he's lying. But she just folds her hands together and smiles. "Tomorrow, maybe. If it works out that way."

The smile Goro gives her in return is much more genuine, and then he leaves.

Down to the second floor, classroom 2-D, where Goro catches the sleeve of a female student loitering just outside the door and flashes a different smile this time, constructed with careful practice in front of a mirror over hours and hours and hours until it felt natural, like breathing. The girl looks up at him, eyes going wide and cheeks flushing with recognition, with the realization that the prince of Shujin is talking to her. The friend beside her actually gasps out loud.

_Pathetic._

"Excuse me, I don't mean to disturb you," he says. "Do you know if Mishima-kun is here right now?"

After a moment of dithering and entirely too much blushing, the girl ducks into the classroom and Mishima steps out a few moments later. Eyes already shining. The second his gaze alights on Goro, his expression brightens even more.

This, if anything, is even worse.

Goro buries his vexation with extreme prejudice and says sweetly, "Mishima-kun. Sorry to disturb you, but I hoped I might have a moment of your time?"

"Of course, senpai!" Mishima responds, like the yappy puppy that he is. "Can I just--ummm--you know what? Never mind! Hahaha--er--lead the way!"

Goro doesn't grit his teeth in annoyance, but it might be a near thing. As Mishima steps out of the classroom and slides the door closed, something briefly catches on the edges of Goro's gaze--light reflecting off of glass maybe. There's an impression of beaten steel, and then just as quickly, it's gone.

"Senpai?" Mishima, pathetically eager to please. Goro blinks the image of knives from his mind and leads the way. He's quick to take care of business after that. Mishima makes an excellent student council asset; he would have been wasted on the volleyball team.

"I have a favor to ask," Goro starts, and smiles. "Just a small thing."

_Rook to H4._

That's just the leash: Mishima, desperate for attention, is already wearing the collar. Goro needs only tug.

* * *

"Um--K-Kurusu...kun?"

3:30 PM and the final bell has rung. Back home Akira hadn't been part of any club, had been a card-carrying member of the going-home club, and at least that shouldn't be any different here. Eyes on your desk, pack up your back and get going, going, going, gone. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Except--

He recognizes this boy, vaguely, in the vague way he vaguely recognizes all of his other vague classmates. Once upon a time he would memorize the class list and every fellow classmate's face on the first day. Please excuse him but with the past few months having been how they've been and he's really not feeling up to that right now. If ever. Maybe never again.

"Guilty," Akira says, because they can't take away your sense of humor, even if they can take everything else.

The other boy is fidgeting, opening and closing his mouth in some arcane attempt at speech. Akira combs back over his memory of roll call that morning. "Mishima, right? Everything good?"

Mishima's mouth opens and closes three more times--Akira keeps count--before he snaps to attention. "Yeah! Great! Peachy! Thank you so much for asking! A-anyway, I have a...message...I have a message for you!"

_Is this kid okay?_

Akira stands and waits and stares before he makes a gesture that conveys _well, after you?_ Or maybe: _could you get on with it, please and thank you?_

"The vice-president would like to..." Mishima trails offer and mutters something unintelligible before continuing in strict, formal tones: "The vice president of Shujin Academy's student council, Akechi Goro-senpai, is waiting to speak with you in the student council room."

A beat.

"....Okay?" Gentle verbal nudge. "Was that it?"

"Was that...." Mishima blinks a couple times, his gaze clearing. "Uh...yeah. Yep. That was it. Thank you very much for your time, Amamiya-kun."

"Kurusu," Akira corrects.

"Right! Right." Mishima smiles brightly and turns to leave. "Good luck!"

_Good luck_. Well, that's that. Mishima is apparently the kind of person to bring a swelling tide of anxiety with him and carry none of it away in his wake. Akira fiddles with the straps of his bag, frowning at nothing in general and no one in particular.

_Akechi Goro is waiting to speak with you._

Akira hasn't met Akechi yet and he's been hoping he wouldn't have to. It's not as if he hadn't expected something along these lines--his hometown being small as it was, the student council liked to get up in everyone's business--but. He's had enough alarm bells primed, courtesy of Ryuji's vocal muttering. Akechi Goro is a liar. Akechi Goro is a menace. Akechi Goro is an asshole. Akechi Goro is dangerous, dangerous, dangerous. Akechi Goro is a wolf in sheep's clothing, a snake wearing a smiling skin. Avoid at all costs at risk of penalties unknown.

_The prince of Shujin Academy!_ Ryuji's voice, a high-pitched falsetto. _Prince of my ass, more like_.

_You might want to reword that_ , Akira had said, to which he'd received an outraged, _Huh?!_

If Akira's learned anything from--well, everything--it's that you don't look a gift lion in the mouth. When The Man comes for you, you show--something something.

Some hardened criminal he is. Bad to the bone.

_Akechi Goro is waiting to speak with you._

Rude to keep someone waiting, he guesses.

The door to the student council room is a door like any other. Akira hesitates a few seconds before sliding it open and cutting into a customary bow.

He's greeted by a chuckle, the voice so warm it drips caramel and honey.

"Kurusu-kun, is it? Please come in."

"...Sorry to interrupt," Akira returns, sliding the door quietly closed behind him.

It's not a big room but not a small one either, by this school's general measure. Average in proportion, average in presentation, every part of it so stupidly average and normal that Akira can't dredge up any justification for why something inside of him is screaming and every hair on his head stands on edge. His teeth ache. There's just--something in the air.

"Take a seat," that warm voice says, a hand waving invitingly in concert. Akira decides where he should sit. It's kind of hard to pick, given the fact that there's only one chair, dead center on its x-axis, y-axis one-fourth between the left-hand wall and the center of the room. Almost like it was picked out and set there on purpose. _Cool_.

Akira takes a seat. After a moment of careful consideration he thinks, _what the fuck_ , and drops his bag on the floor. Then he looks up and at the boy who requested-asked-ordered him here.

Akechi is roughly Akira's height, roughly Akira's size and shape. A little broader in the shoulders, maybe, a smidge slimmer about the waist, but not enough to make a measurable difference. Chin-length sandalwood hair, maple leaf eyes. He was standing by the window when Akira walked in but he's seated on a desk now, equidistant from Akira's chair like the room's a stage and someone planned it, perched like some haughty kind of bird with his arms crossed over his chest and a sanguine little smile on his very smug face. Akira has never wanted to punch someone so badly in his entire life--except maybe the guy who got him arrested.

He's also never wanted to--what? Wanted to--something? He's not sure. Something feels like it's pulling him forward, making him lean bodily in, claws hooked painfully into the marrow of his bones.

"Kurusu-kun," Akechi says, and for some reason, he sounds delighted. There's almost a musical quality to his voice, a sing-song cadence to the way he says Akira's name. Maybe it's a song Akira doesn't know? Lyn? Risette? Anyone? "The transfer student of mystery. It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm--"

"I've heard of you." Akira isn't trying to be rude. He just wants to go h--to bed.

Akechi pauses, something falling across his expression when Akira interrupts his stupid little monologue. A thin, thin veil falling across his features. He chuckles. "Ah--well, yes. The school does talk, I suppose."

"That's one way to put it," Akira deadpans. This room is fucking _cold_.

Akechi hums. Something else shifts now, and this time the way Akechi is looking down at him--Akira's blood _boils_ , a deeper, older voice echoing in his head.

_Damn brat! I'll sue!_

"I'll tell you what." Akechi rests one delicate-looking finger beside the sharp curve of his mouth, so smug and so superior and so full of so _much_ undeserved confidence. "Let's cut to the chase. I want to make a deal. You won't say no, will you?"

Akira swallows down an immediate, instinctual "no." He _definitely_ wants to punch him. He also feels vaguely sick.

"...What do you want?" Akira tries not to bite the inside of his mouth. He hates the taste of pennies on his tongue.

"I'm not some petty playground bully looking to steal your lunch money." Akechi pushes himself off the desk, letting go of the advantage of height and staged drama he must have spent a comedic amount of time setting up in advance to stalk towards Akira with the measured gait of a predator. When he reaches Akira's seat, he stops short of their knees touching and leans in. "Just an errand here, a favor there...I'm really not asking for much."

Akechi leans over him, leans in. Akira very definitely feels sick. Maybe if he threw up on Akechi's shoes he'd feel better, but he doesn't think he will.

So maybe not _that_ sick.

"How about this?" Akechi asks, his voice quiet and heavy and sharp with threat. "If you make a deal with me, I won't tell the rest of the school--all your peers, all your teachers, all your maybes for a future where what you did won't matter--that you assaulted a politician. I won't ruin you completely.

"Agreed?"

There's been a cold feeling crawling down Akira's spine this entire time, planck by centimeter by planck.

Akira opens his mouth, breathes, swallows. Remembers Mishima in the classroom, maybe half an hour ago, and how Akira had seen him going through these same motions and thought how much he looked like a fish yanked ungraciously from the water.

Akira swallows air. "Let me think about it."

Akechi only smiles.

* * *

_You'll never amount to anything,_ they told him once. _I don't know why you even try_.

_They_ here being plural, not singular. Encompassing all possible referents, not all possible genders. Third-person exclusive. They, they, _they_. A shapeshifting amalgam of every person who ever said Goro could never be enough.

_Choke on it and die_ , he thinks at them, when he thinks of them at all.

_He thinks of them often, like picking at a hangnail._   
_Tear away the thready paronychium and_   
_let the blood savor the open air again._   
_And again, and again, and again._

_Goro wears gloves for a reason._

He clawed his way here with his own sharp teeth and bloody hangnails. You can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps but you can pull yourself up by your loathing for the silk necktie knotted artfully around your bastard father's throat, if you try hard enough and hate even harder. Spite is a powerful motivator. Lust for revenge could fuel a small bomb.

_Queen to E7._

Maybe a very large one, if left to fester long enough.

_Checkmate in eleven._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enormous thank yous to the following: Corvus, for being my sounding board for this entire thing and being in my corner, punching my negative self-talk in the face every time. Dormiry, for listening to me ramble about it and cheering me on and being just all-around great. Jessie, Lace, Rena, Nick, Aki, Cia, Eyrie, Chrome, Lia, Taya: if I don't name anything specific, you hopefully know what for--or at least that your general support, encouragement, and input has been so helpful. 
> 
> Crimes and Future--I'm not closer to either of you but I ran ideas by you for this and I won't soon forget how you helped me figure them out. Cheers, you're two of the writers I most admire.
> 
> And as always, if you don't comment then I will cry. But like no pressure.
> 
> Some culture/reference notes:  
> \- The title of this chapter, "bird's opening," is the name of an opening chess move. The chess moves themselves have no specific meaning outside of the piece I chose to correspond to a character in some scenes. I know how to play chess....in theory. I know the pieces! And how they move! Trying to read the notation made my brain hurt though.  
> \- Chiyoda-ku is one of the wards (subdivisions) of Tokyo and the political center of the country. It is home to the Imperial Palace, the National Diet, the Prime Minister's Residence, and the Supreme Court.  
> \- Student councils are generally not as powerful as they're depicted in a lot of anime! Goro is just special like that  
> \- Spent like an hour trying to find out how Japanese court dockets are numbered but about the only resources I could find that were definitive were for Supreme Court cases, which obviously doesn't work. Ultimately what I settled on (2016-JP29-0004) is the year, ISO code for Nara prefecture (which is where I decided Akira's home is located for various reasons), and what would be the sequential number of the case for the year: so in other words, the fourth case in Nara prefecture in the calendar year of 2016.  
> \- "All rise" / "Bow" / "Be seated" is the classroom greeting students give their teachers. I believe typically it would be one of the class representatives who would conduct it, but it could be another student also. There are three kinds of bows in Japan; students perform a _keirei_ , which is kind of professional but not subservient. A keirei bow is made by bending the torso forward about 30 degrees.  
> \- Paronychium is soft tissue that surrounds your nails. When you rip off a hangnail, it's usually the paronychium that's tearing! Get rekt Hiruta-sensei, I'm the biology teacher now.


	2. alekhine's gun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Akira’s mind is speeding ahead a thousand kilometers per minute, outpacing the Shinkansen like a rocket. He knows what Takamaki’s going to say just as she opens her mouth to say it.
> 
> “I think,” he says slowly once she’s finished, “I have an idea.”
> 
> _No smoke without fire, and you can’t see the forest for the trees—_
> 
> Akira doesn't make promises he can’t keep— 
> 
> _—but in this case, the heartland is burning._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I was really hoping I'd get this up in time for New Year's—and then I wound up working four 10-hour days in a row last week and that kind of fucked me up. A sincere thank you to the following:  
>  \- Zov (stovinar on Twitter, Zovinar on AO3) for agreeing to beta this (my first time having a beta! Wow!)  
>  \- Lily Thorne (thornofthelily on both Twitter and AO3) for reviewing sensitive content in this chapter specifically  
>  \- Chrome (twt chromiekins/ao3 Chromophilic_Daydream) for checking by description of Akira's run through Shibuya station based off her memory of the internal layout 
> 
> This chapter carries warnings for referenced suicide, implied sexual assault, and explicit sexual harassment. I'll put a breakdown in the end notes for anyone who wants a more detailed warning.
> 
> I'm absolutely pleased as punch by how strong of a reaction I got to chapter one, so without further ado!

Akira sneezes his way into consciousness, the lingering tendrils of dust he'd missed on his first cleaning spree too much for his sleeping sinuses to handle. He feels like shit. Well, that's the 2016 mood: what else is new.

He sits up.

There's a weight at the end of his futon, curled up beside his foot and vibrating minutely. Akira looks down the length of the makeshift bed and feels something palpable unspool behind his ribcage. The cat he'd rescued the other night must have jumped up onto his bed at some point in the night, curling up in a spot just far enough away for it to feel safe and comfortable. That intangible something warms, loosens, seeps through his body. Akira resists the impulse to reach out and run his hand across the little thing's softness; their relationship hasn't deepened enough for that yet and he doesn't want to start his morning disinfecting scratches.

But he runs the tip of his index finger through its whiskers at the very least, just to see it twitch and twist away, the corner of his mouth curling at the sight.

"Hey!" A man's voice, gruff and reproachful, shatters the easy quiet. "You getting a move on or what?"

Right. Akira’s quote-unquote room is the dingy attic above an old school kissaten, creaky floorboards, no door, and all. Its proprietor his reluctant minder. Privacy? Never heard of her.

"If you put your probation in jeopardy because you can't get to school on time, don't look to me for pity," Sojiro continues mercilessly. "I'm not here to be your babysitter."

Akira swallows down the bitterness that surges up his throat like rancid gravy. It's not Sojiro's fault he's in this position and, unlike his parents, Sojiro's made some effort to care—enough to put a roof over his head, at the very least. Akira knows how to get by with whatever meager scraps of consideration other people are able to give.

_Doesn't mean he has to like it._

"I'm up," he calls back, trying to pitch his voice just enough to carry down the stairs but not enough to be accused of yelling. He must be successful going by Sojiro’s inaudible grumble in return, but it's still loud enough to wake the cat. It lifts its head and blinks at Akira through narrow, appraising eyes.

He still hasn't told Sojiro; he's afraid he won't be allowed to keep it. Which is probably stupid, he'll be caught eventually. Akira pauses in his rummaging to prop the window open. Maybe he can pretend the cat snuck in? He thinks he could sell the story if he played his cards right.

When he'd cleaned the other night, Akira had done his level best to make his new lodgings more hospitable. Most of that had involved mopping up what felt like decades' worth of dust and dislodging lacy cobwebs from between the ceiling beams, but he'd also had the chance to unpack at least. Not that he'd brought much with him, but still—good thing he thought to bring hangers for his clothes.

He pulls down his uniform from where it’s hanging on the shelves, but as he’s going through the motion he has the thought: _how do laundry?_ There's a laundromat tucked in by the bathhouse across the way but Akira has no money. Maybe Sojiro will let him use the washing machine at his house?

Better not get his hopes up.

On his way out Akira stoops at the stairs to sling his school bag over his shoulder—and staggers against its weight, because the thing feels like it holds a bowling ball. He sets it gingerly back on the floor and crouches down to peer through its zipper-toothed opening.

Two large blue eyes blink back up at him.

"You can't come to school with me," Akira hisses at the cat, even as his heart does flip-flops and sets off on a marathon. He's known this cat for less than forty-eight hours and already he'd blow up the moon for it, if there ever were a scenario where a cat required total lunar annihilation (unlikely, but it's the thought that counts). The cat just keeps staring up at him, its little kitty face confident and bossy. _Make me move,_ its expression seems to say, as if it speaks Japanese like an actual person.

Akira tips his bag sideways so the cat has no choice but to scramble out. It trots a few meters away before stopping to turn around, giving him a look of mortal offense as it lashes its tail.

"Sorry," Akira murmurs, giving it a crooked smile. "My school sucks. No emotional support animals allowed."

The cat just watches him leave with its hair standing on end.

At the foot of the steps Akira pauses, fiddling with a lock of his hair. Sojiro stands behind the counter, smoking a cigarette and watching the news with evident disinterest.

"Sit down," he says brusquely, pointing at the full plate sitting on the counter, aromatic steam curling invitingly into the air. "I won't have you passing out on the subway and giving me a bad name."

The rolling hitch in Akira's belly unknots itself considerably. When he leaves the cafe, pausing just outside the door to flip the sign to open and prop its easel into place, his stomach is pleasantly full.

Maybe not such a bad way to start his day.

* * *

In Aoyama there’s a knot of people, gathered around the alcove where the vending machines are installed. The sight is irregular enough to make Akira stop at the edges, so he can listen to the jumble of voices all talking over one another in an excited babble.

“—never seen it before today! But what’s it doing up there?”

“Maybe it’s a stray…”

“D’you think the principal would let us keep it? Not inside the building, obviously, but maybe in the courtyard—”

He’s starting to grasp at the frayed edges of an improbable assumption when a voice calls out from nearby. “Hey, now. Don’t you kids realize the bell’s about to ring? Time to hurry along.”

Akira tugs at an errant curl, peering sideways through his glasses as Kamoshida ambles up to the group. He stops just short of direct contact, his fists propped against his hips, smooth and cocksure and oh-so-paternalistic.

_So this kid’s the one, huh? The trash they dump on us…_

The other students, at the very least, seem to be just a touch shy of awed (maybe, or maybe not, or otherwise afraid and hiding it well); they disperse easily at Kamoshida’s prodding. Akira makes to blend in with the crowd and let its current carry him the rest of the way through the school gates—but of course his luck doesn’t work out that way.

“Oh, no,” Kamoshida says, grabbing the collar of his jacket. “You stay where you are.”

The students passing by notice Akira then, their eyes pulled sideways by the invisible spotlight now hanging over his head. It would be generous to describe the volume of their gossip as whispering.

As the last of the spectators trickle away, the school bell cries out: _start of day, start of day!_ Akira hefts his bag over his shoulder and tugs his uniform jacket out of the grip of the overgrown man zeroed in on his one-point-seven-five meter teenage self so he can face him.

It’s not strictly Kamoshida’s height that makes him intimidating, not his musculature nor even his hands, curled as they are into meaty fists that look plenty comfortable with hitting things. It’s definitely not the gold medal or the accolades either, though all of those lend to a certain kind of daunting. No, what makes Kamoshida exude dread like miasma is the imbalance of scales tipped out in his favor: not this one man in particular, but all the many men and other women lined up with arms open to give him free passage.

_Do you see how much trouble you’ve caused?_

“I don’t know why you bother showing up. This school might have made you its newest charity case, but we both know toilet scum is all you’ll ever be.”

_This is the thanks we get, after sixteen years?_

Akira swallows down the fury surging up his throat. He turns to meet Kamoshida’s sneer with a hard stare of his own. Kamoshida drops his hands away from his hips, letting them swing, heavy and hatchet-like, at the ends of his arms, and looms up to his full height.

_Ungrateful, selfish child._

“Who do you think you’re looking at like that?” Kamoshida takes a step closer, radiating menacing intention. Akira stays rooted in place in spite of the cold sweat prickling down the back of his neck, every instinct screaming at him to run. “I’d love to see you try something.” Another step forward; one of those meat-cleaver hands scythes up to curl with brutal promise beside Akira’s face. “Go ahead. One foot out of line and I’ll make sure that’s the last thing you—”

He’s cut off by the loud _BANG_ of something slamming atop one of the vending machines, and then a heavy black shape drops to the ground between them. Akira takes a quick step back, catching himself before he falls. Kamoshida, top-set and heavier, isn’t so lucky; he shambles several steps backwards before landing hard on the asphalt. There’s something arched and furry separating them, filling the air with hissing and spitting, its tail thrust into the air in a puffed up warning signal.

A cat, and not just any cat. _The_ cat, the very one he rescued.

It followed him to school?

Kamoshida clearly doesn’t want to get savaged any more than Akira does: he scrambles to his feet and, with one final disgusted glare, rushes the length of the alley to vanish through the school gate. Akira’s heart, thudding tightly in his throat, settles down to hammer less obtrusively in his chest where it belongs. Once Kamoshida’s out of sight the cat withdraws, twisting sinuously to clean itself as if nothing ever happened.

Akira takes a moment to gather himself, to even out his breathing. Before he leaves, he holds his hand out to the cat for it to smell; it sniffs his fingers suspiciously then—to his surprised delight—rubs one whisker-lined cheek against them before bolting away. It pauses a few meters down the street, staring at him expectantly. _Aren’t you forgetting something?_ it almost seems to say.

“Yeah,” Akira says, because he’s imagining a cat talking to him in his head. But before he leaves, because it’s only polite, he adds: “thank you.”

The cat shows him its tail.

* * *

Kawakami is waiting for him beside one of the sliding classroom doors, her arms crossed and her foot tattooing an impatient pattern onto the hardwood floor. When she sees him climb the stairs into view she uncrosses her arms and lets out all the air she’d been holding in her lungs in a great gust of a sigh.

She’s a decent enough homeroom teacher, all things considered. She's trying, Akira can tell that much, and at least she hasn't said anything insulting.

(One night during the small handful of weeks between his sentencing and his start of exile, he'd run into his first year homeroom teacher on his way home from the store. She'd physically backed herself up against a telephone pole at the sight of him as she threatened, loud enough for every prying ear in every nearby home to hear, to call the police on him a second time.

He has a pretty low bar for authority figures right now, all things considered.)

"Just keep your head down and steer clear of any trouble, okay?" She has him collared outside the classroom in the handful of tiny minutes before the bell rings again to signal the end of homeroom. "So far no one seems to know what the real story is, but I'm starting to hear people whisper. They just seem like stupid rumors, but—"

The corners of her mouth tuck into a frown. For a moment she looks like she wants to say something.

"Nevermind. You should get to class."

Like she doesn't need to get to class also, but Akira doesn't argue. Just slips through the rear door into the classroom and takes his seat, ignoring the background chatter that kicks up in his wake.

Takamaki watches him from two seats ahead, body twisted awkwardly in her chair. Her soft mouth pinched with frustration, and something else too—concern, maybe. He's kind of had a sense about her since he saw her on the way to school the other day, like she's burying something too, just trying to deal with it as best she can. He meets her gaze; after a moment’s hesitation, she turns away.

At the very least, she seems kind. He can appreciate kind.

* * *

The morning classes pass by in a hazy blur. At one point the social studies teacher catches him staring off into the ether. Chalk is thrown, a not-so-epic dodge attempted. The other students get a good laugh in, which is fine; at least someone’s having a good time.

When the lunch bell rings, Akira's phone buzzes; alarm bells go off in his head all at once.

> **unknown:** Good afternoon, Kurusu-kun.  
>  **unknown:** I trust your day is going well?  
>  **unknown:** This is Akechi Goro.  
>  **unknown:** I took the liberty of looking up your number in your student file.  
>  **unknown:** Regarding our conversation yesterday afternoon—  
>  **unknown:** I look forward to hearing your answer.  
>  **unknown:** Let me know when you're ready to speak again  
>  **unknown:** Ah—but as your upperclassman, I implore you not to shirk class.  
>  **unknown:** At your earliest convenience, then.  
>  **unknown:** A response by Friday would be best  
>  **unknown:** Otherwise, well…I can't guarantee what might happen.  
>  **unknown:** I hope you understand.  
>  **unknown:** Until then.

The words blur on the screen the longer he stares at them; in a fit of pique he considers blocking the offending number. _I understand that you're an asshole_ , he thinks but doesn't type. God. _God_. Does he have to text like an evil librarian? Capital letters at the start of each sentence and punctuation at the end and everything? Akira is left frowning down at his phone screen, thumb hovering over the keyboard, when Ryuji saves from deciding whether to reply by invading the classroom.

"Sup, dude!" He leans over Akira's desk with his hands stuffed in his pockets and a grin brighter than sunshine, completely oblivious to—or more likely dismissive of—the dark looks the other students are throwing his way. "Let's go find somewhere else to chill."

It's a relief to escape the stuffy classroom and the way the other students are staring at them, though he can't help but notice Takamaki watching him again on their way out with her lips pursed in another frown. Ryuji leads the way down the hallway, through the passage to the practice building, up, up, up the stairs to the school roof. The sign on the door says it's off-limits but clearly it's a ban no one bothers to enforce, because the handle turns when Ryuji twists it and the door opens easily at his confident push.

It takes a moment for Akira's eyes to adjust from the dimness of the stairwell to the bright outdoor sunshine. When his vision clears he sees there's already someone up here: a girl, with the stocky build of an athlete and brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. She's standing at the fence encircling the roof's perimeter, fingers laced in a vice grip through the hard steel mesh of the enclosure.

"Suzui?" Ryuji calls out as he hops up to sit on one of the abandoned desks. "What're you doing up here?"

The girl—Suzui—doesn't answer for a moment before turning to give Ryuji a vacant smile. "Hi, Sakamato-kun. Up here to eat? I'll get out of your way."

"Huh? No, I didn't mean—"

"Enjoy your lunch," she says quietly, ignoring Ryuji’s protests entirely. Akira just barely catches her eye as she brushes past them; for a moment he sees fractured glass and something even more broken still before her gaze shutters and she looks away. Something mordant lingers in the air—a smell, maybe, like ozone before a thunderstorm—there for three torn fourths of a second before it's gone again.

Ryuji tears off a piece of his curry bread between his teeth and chews thoughtfully. "Wonder what she was doin' up here."

"You seem like you know each other."

"Not really." Ryuji shrugs, pulling one knee up against his chest and grimacing at what the movement costs him. His other leg dangles from the edge of the desk, kicking out in metronome. "We went to the same middle school, but we never really talked much. She's on the _volleyball team._ " The last two words leave his mouth in a sour grumble.

Akira picks his way between the dirt-packed planters and tipped-over chairs littering the roof to lean against one of the big air exchanges jutting up from the bitumen. He'd heard all about the volleyball team from Ryuji the first day of school after classes ended, when they'd found themselves in the gymnasium polishing the floor on their hands and knees because Kamoshida had caught them chatting after classes ended and decided that troublemakers needed to be kept busy or else. He'd said it with a sneer in his eyes and a curl to his lip that had Akira shoving his hands into his pockets so Kamoshida couldn't see the way they curled into involuntary fists.

The principal, Kamoshida, and Akechi: it's only been three days and he's found a reason by the end of each one to hate this place even more.

"You okay, dude?" Akira is yanked out of his thoughts by Ryuji's voice, Ryuji himself leaning forward and searching his face with open concern. The tightness in Akira's chest eases by fractions.

"Yeah." Akira straightens up and forces a smile. It even feels half-way to genuine. "I'm hanging in there."

At least Ryuji seems like a decent guy. Maybe this school year won't be so bad after all. He can do this.

A thought hits him suddenly, the words out of his mouth before he can decide whether asking is a good idea. "You know that guy you warned me about?"

Ryuji's right leg, swinging back and forth against the edge of the desk, kicks out sharply. _"That_ sunnova bitch," he bites out. "What about him?"

Akira fiddles with a curl hanging in the periphery of his vision. He doesn't like asking other people questions unprompted, looking for answers for himself and himself alone. It's too much like prying, too much like putting his junk on other people for them to deal with. But now that he's asked it's a one-way track, no way to stop the roller coaster’s downhill momentum without crashing and exploding and making an even bigger mess.

"The way you said it, it seemed like something happened," he hedges. "Did it have to do with what you told me? About Kamoshida and the track team?"

The swinging pendulum of Ryuji's leg stills. For a long moment he doesn't move, tension coiled in every tight live-wire line of his body. The sight looks wrong somehow; Akira's only known Ryuji for a few days but the consistent impression he's gotten in every snapshot of interaction has been one of dynamic electricity. What was that thing he learned in physics last year? Something about closed systems and energy—not created, never destroyed—existing within a state of circuitous and perpetual transformation.

If Ryuji’s body is an arched fork of lightning, then his expression is a dark and ominous thunder cloud. “That piece of shit,” he says, heat blooming in the static prickly heat of his vocal chords. “He wasn’t the student council vice prez yet, though everybody knew he was gonna be—well really everybody thought he was gonna be president but then he dropped out of the race near the end and—anyway, that’s not the point!

“Point _bein’_ even if he wasn’t in charge of everything, he was basically still runnin’ them anyway. So when all that—” He waves emphatically “—shit went down, he marched into the disciplinary hearing like it was some kinda parade. Lookin’ so smug, like he knew everyone was gonna listen to him, and then to make it even worse of fucking _course_ everyone did.”

Ryuji cuts himself off, fuming quietly. Getting his temper back under control. Akira gives him a moment before prodding gently. “What happened then?”

Ryuji startles. “Oh—well, basically…” He kicks his foot out again, the white canvas of his uwabaki cutting a reflective arc up into the air and then down again, followed by the other in opposing rhythm. A seam by the side of his mouth tightens in time with every even-numbered swing. “He’s good with words, y’know? In just a couple minutes he’d talked everyone in the room ‘cept my mom into believing that I’d been tryin’ to _corrupt_ the rest of the team so I could upstage the captain. Like I was trying to...to take over the team or something!

“I never wanted to be fuckin’ _captain_ ,” Ryuji grits out. “I just wanted to run side by side with people who knew me.”

Akira nods and _hms_ and frowns as he gives Ryuji the space he needs to tell his story, following along in his wake. It’s odd, isn’t it? It definitely sounds odd. Akira pulls out each loose warp in the weaving and files it away for later consideration.

“It sucks you had to deal with that,” is what he tells Ryuji once his fury peters itself out. Ryuji looks up at him with a hard stare, his eyes two dark vortexes of their own storms.

“It is what it is.” Ryuji’s voice is bitter and resigned in equal measures. “But don’t let it get to you. And if him—or Kamoshida—or any of ‘em, start causing you problems, let me know. I’ve got your back, dude.”

“Thank you,” Akira says, his heart warm and uncomfortably tight.

 _No one else ever has_.

* * *

_What happens next is this: Suzui jumps._

_The only ones surprised by that are those who aren’t paying attention._

* * *

Eventually the school decides to send everyone home for the day, because what else are they supposed to do? Akira can think of a lot of things—checking in with the students to make sure no one else is traumatized or about to step off a ledge of their own, just to start—but wish fulfillment is an unproductive exercise with no substantive outcome.

He spots Akechi once, briefly, at the edge of the crowd in the courtyard. Akechi, looking less impressive than usual where he’s kind of—hunched in on himself? Looking almost kind of...not quite shaken, but definitely discomfited. Immaculate and with not a hair out of place, but lips pressed thin and something savage lurking in the bruised-blood shadows of his eyes.

It’s the president who takes charge at that point, while the teachers are arguing and everyone else is dithering, and Takamaki is shouting for someone to let her be with her friend. It’s the president who takes Takamaki gently by the shoulder and says a few quiet words to her before she climbs into the back of the ambulance herself, her brows pinched tight as she reaches for Suzui’s limp hand while the doors swing closed. The vehicle surges forward, lurches around a corner, and disappears.

After that, Akechi is nowhere to be seen.

Akira almost rests a hand on one of Takamaki’s shaking shoulders. Almost brushes the worn fabric of her varsity hoodie but holds himself back. He knows she can feel the ghost of his hand by the way she tenses up; he knows the comfort he tries to offer is rejected by the way she slips away. Akira pretends to ignore the tears she scrubs away from the corners of her eyes as she leaves.

It’s harder to ignore her later in the narrow underground confines of the subway, where he stumbles across her tucked away in an alcove, glaring down at her phone screen as tears trace lines down the soft curves of her face. She’s an ugly crier: her face blotchy with color and a rivulet of white snot dripping from her left nostril before she wipes it away on her sleeve.

(He thinks, idly, that she’d be delighted if he said as much to her—not that he does.)

She transfers her glare from her phone’s screen to his entire person, as if that would be enough to keep away both him and whatever else is hounding her. “What do you want?”

His tongue catches in his mouth: stupid, ungainly. “Are you okay?”

It’s the wrong thing to ask: her mouth twists and the lines around her eyes squeeze tight against leaking tears. She draws herself fully upright, and why are so many of the people in this city so goddamn _tall?_ Do they put something in the tap water here?

“Thanks for the concern, but it’s none of your business.” Her voice, flat and wooden, shakes ever-so-slightly at the edges. “Just—leave me alone, okay?”

And he knows, he _knows_ , that it’s wrong to just stand back and do nothing, but he can’t stop her from leaving anyway.

Akira leans back against the tiled wall and lets it suck what meager heat it can from his skin. He tried, right? Most people wouldn’t even do that.

Something warm brushes against his ankle, some part of it twining vine-like around his lower leg. He’s not surprised when he looks down and sees the cat in his shadow for the second time that day. Like a little magician, it seems to always know exactly where he goes.

Akira leans down to offer his hand; the cat gives his fingers a perfunctory sniff before rubbing against them. Its whiskers tickle against his palm; he gives it a perfunctory scratch between the ears and pulls away.

When he closes his eyes he can see the dark smudge of Suzui’s hair in the few stomach-lurching seconds of her freefall; he can see her back to him on the school roof, her silhouette trapped in the shadow of the fence stretched across the rooftop like a fly caught in a spider’s web. There’s no way he could have known. He barely knows _her_. And yet he can’t shake the sickly feeling that there’s more he could have done.

Tiny needle-points of pain dig into his leg and pull his attention down to the cat, its claws piercing through the denim of his jeans and hooking into his skin. He frowns down at it and it stares back at him, ignoring his reproach. Its eyes two true blue touchstones, appraising.

He tried. You can’t do more than that.

_That’s the bare minimum you can do._

The cat leaps away a split second later, like it knows what he’s thinking; Akira spares a moment of self-pity for the ache in his leg before following. It leads him on a chase: through the Buchiko gate and up the stairs, following the arrows pointing towards the Ginza line, past a shouting station attendant, up more stairs and down corridors, dodging other passengers and passers-by and flitting past brightly lit signs until he’s climbing the steps out the east exit gate and into the rushing nighttime crowds criss-crossing the Shibuya Scramble.

He read once that anywhere between one thousand to twenty-five hundred people cross the Scramble every two minutes. How does anyone brush shoulders with that many other living, breathing bodies and just go about their day?

He loses sight of the cat until he hears it, improbably, yowling above the noise of the crowd. He has to push his way through the jackknife throngs of people, and he finally catches up with Takamaki a block and a half away. The overhead lights catch in the drops of moisture gathered in her eyelashes and refract outward in tiny glittering pieces of rainbow. Even ugly-crying, she’s impossibly beautiful.

“Why are you even here?” Her voice cracks over the words. “I said just leave me alone, so....so just…” She lifts one fisted hand and thuds it weakly against his chest in shallow warning. “Go away.”

Akira shakes his head.

“It’s none of your business.”

“Neither was Suzui,” Akira says.

Takamaki’s glare could flay him alive.

“Look.” Akira casts a wary eye at the people stopping to stare. “We have an audience. So maybe—”

When his searching gaze lands on a WcDonalds, Takamaki gives a watery laugh. “Oh _god_. If you think I’m crying my heart out in a greasy fast food joint, try again.”

Her hand closing vice-like around his wrist feels like a victory; he lets her drag him away.

* * *

Takamaki leads him to a cafe in Miyashita Park, a quiet little place with tiny tables and frilly curtains. The hostess must see something in her face when she seats them, or maybe even in Akira’s, because the server who waits on them is meticulously cordial and leaves them alone as soon as her job is done. Takamaki sits on her side of the table, two hands curled around a steaming hot mug, the rising moisture wreaking havoc on her carefully-styled twin tails. For the second time that night Akira has the thought she might appreciate being called ugly, if only for the novelty.

“Tell me what you meant about Shiho,” she says, her voice is like a whip, with just that much sting, “right now, or I’ll—I’ll...”

Akira cuts in to save her from the need to perform her heartbreak. “I saw her on the school roof the other day. I didn’t think anything of it until...”

Lots of people stand on rooftops all the time, for totally innocuous reasons.

“Until she jumped,” Takamaki says, voice quavering. Made smaller reflexively.

Akira swallows heavily. “Yeah.”

Her phone, resting beside her elbow on the table, gives a premonitory rumble; when she checks it a shudder runs through her entire body. She sets it gingerly back down and hunches forward over the tabletop, her arms criss-crossed over her chest in a facsimile of a hug. The trailing tails of her hair brush against hands; she twines her fingers through the strands and tugs reflexively.

“Maybe if I’d just—given in,” she mumbles, her voice taking on water, “if I’d just sucked it up and let him…”

Akira’s tongue unsticks itself from the sense of horror gumming it to the roof of his mouth.

“...do what?” he finishes, holding out his hand. An invitation.

Takamaki looks up at him with red-rimmed, impossibly blue eyes, something pained and heavy rippling beneath the surface. Then she holds her phone out to him gingerly, like it’s a small bomb. The screen is unlocked. Akira taps on one of the notifications; the messaging app opens.

The first thing he sees is a photo. Taken from a camera phone at close range, it displays its subject in nauseatingly vivid anatomical detail.

Text follows. The characters, precise black lines beneath the image, tread tepid water at the edges of his vision. A message, then—an address, more text, threats and foul promises—

Bile, acrid with the taste of chloride, creeps up his esophagus and seeps into his mouth. Akira locks the phone and sets it screen-faced down back on the table, trying to think of what would be even remotely helpful to say. Every thought hits a cliff and dives right off of it into nothing.

Takamaki recollects herself; eventually her shoulders stop shaking. “I block him every time he texts me. And then he just texts me again from a different number. I’m so sick of it. Why won’t he leave me _alone_?”

“I believe you.” He does.

“I _hate_ him.” Her voice surges. “And if you ask me how I know who it is, I’ll…”

“I believe you.” He means it.

She looks up at him, eyes wide. Nothing ugly or pretty about her desperate expression or the fracture lines behind her eyes. “Thanks,” she whispers. “No one else ever does.”

“How long has this been going on?”

Takamaki takes her phone back, carefully backing out of the chat before tapping the screen a few times—blocking the newest number, he assumes, for whatever small window of peace that gives her. “About six months. It wasn’t so bad at first, just weird. Offers for rides to school, help with homework, exercise tips… But it made me uncomfortable enough that I went to him during break one day and asked him to stop. I made something up like, oh my dad saw the texts and he got upset, thought maybe I was dating one of the older male models I met through a gig, but he said—”

She pulls a face.

“He said, ‘I thought your parents were in Italy this month, Ann-chan.’ And my parents _were_ out of town that month, in _Florence_ , but I didn’t—they’re out of town so much for work that I hadn’t mentioned it to anyone, and I definitely didn’t say where they went. Then that night he texted me again. It said, ‘It must be lonely being home all by your lonesome,’ and that was when I blocked his number. But then the next night, the other texts started, and then the—pictures, and whatever.

“I don’t even know how he got my number. I was thinking…” Her voice grows small, trailing off, before continuing: “I figured, he got it from Shiho—not that she gave it to him, but he must have gone through her phone. Weird, because she’s good about internet privacy, but I thought that was it. Only now—”

Her momentum falters and fractures. She stops her story to rub at the tears catching in the already-damp tangle of her eyelashes. Akira hands her a napkin from the dispenser and looks to the side as she blows her nose and gathers the tangled threads of herself back together.

“Thanks,” she mumbles.

Akira waves it off. “No worries. You…can keep going, if you want.”

“Right. Yeah…okay.” She worries her lip between her teeth, wringing the dirty napkin with her hands like some specific person’s neck. “I don’t…I don’t know. I can’t say for sure. But I think he did something to her, something awful enough that made her feel like jumping off a roof was the only option she had left. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to picture what. I’ve heard more than enough stories at work from models who’ve been through the same.”

Akira hasn’t heard anyone’s personal anecdotes, but he was a supporting character in someone else's. He’d had some imprecise idea in that moment of what he was seeing unfold, of what would happen if he didn’t intervene. He doesn’t regret his choice, even in spite of the bitterness he feels at being left to hang out and dry.

“Have you talked to anyone about this?” he asks, thinking over the options. Kawakami seems receptive but she’s just one teacher; what could she do? There’s the principal, obviously, but to get someone like that to listen to someone like them, you’d need enough evidence to offset the cost he’d incur from doing so. He doesn’t know the other teachers or administrators enough beyond those two.

Takamaki laughs like a ship taking on water. “No one believes girls,” she says, emphatic, _“ever.”_

Akira thinks back to this afternoon and the chaotic handful of minutes frozen in time in the courtyard: Ryuji clearing a path through the other students, shoulder-checking anyone who got in their way; Takamaki on her knees at Suzui’s side, her hands curled around her friend’s like a lifeline; an upperclassmen, the student council president, cutting into the scene, pushing away a teacher, speaking with an EMT, kneeling next to Takamaki with one hand resting on her shoulder as she spoke with the other girl in a quiet voice—

“What about the student council?” There’s something dangling like at the far edges of his perception like a dark and murky shadow. “The president, she’s a third year, right? I saw her talk to you earlier. The teachers seem like they might listen to her.”

Takamaki looks at him from across the table, her lips pursed, considering. “Niijima-senpai? She’s—okay, I guess, if your definition of ‘okay’ is ‘usually useless.’ She did give me her number and she said she’d be in contact, but like… honestly, I doubt it. She might be decent on her own but it’s not just her, y’know?”

Akira’s mind is speeding ahead a thousand kilometers per minute, outpacing the Shinkansen like a rocket. He knows what Takamaki’s going to say just as she opens her mouth to say it.

“I think,” he says slowly once she’s finished, “I have an idea.”

_No smoke without fire, and you can’t see the forest for the trees—_

Akira doesn't make promises he can’t keep—

_—but in this case, the heartland is burning._

* * *

“I know the student body is distressed right now,” Goro tells the president of the literature club before he takes his leave. “Please be sure to let me know if there’s anything else you need.”

She smiles and thanks him, and with that last item on his official agenda taken care of, he’s free now to attend to personal matters.

The faculty and administration have done their due diligence following yesterday’s ruckus by brusquely warning the student body against discussing it whatsoever, which naturally means the students bother their council instead. He’s spent half his afternoon chasing after club officers and class leaders, just doing damage control. Two hours of listening to the grievances of people who hadn’t even known the girl’s name before yesterday.

Goro pauses as he’s passing through the walkway connecting the classroom building to the practice building, staring out over the courtyard. The spot where Suzui’s body collided with the ground is fenced off with hurdles and barricade tape, a taped-up sign warning passersby not to interfere with the police investigation in progress. The break in the usual topography has the gravity of a black hole: it pulls at Goro’s awareness, forcing him to stop and stare.

Something morbid rasps at the edge of his imagination. There’s a sound Goro knows that’s worse than nails on a chalkboard: a high-pitched whistle shrieking in symphony with the friction-scream of wheels breaking on the train tracks.

With a sharp mental shake, he jerks his gaze away and presses on.

Kurusu has already made himself at home in the student council room, slouched in a chair and spinning his phone idly in the air between his hands—a neat little trick, to be able to manage that without shattering the thing.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Goro says briskly, sliding the door closed with a sharp _snick_. The furniture in the room is still in conference-room arrangement; a shame Goro couldn’t set his stage this time. He paces to the front of the room and sets his bag on the table, turning neatly on his heel to face his captive audience. “Thank you for meeting with me. I promise not to take up too much of your time.”

No response, not even a twitch in his direction. Just the careless legerdemain flourish of Kurusu’s hands, setting sunlight winking off the phone spinning between them.

Well then. It’s to be the sullen, silent act, then? Goro mastered the use of that tactic years ago: child’s play to subvert it, used now against him, to his own ends.

“When last we spoke, I made you an offer,” Goro says softly, bracing his gloved hands against the desktop and letting them support his weight as he leans forward. “Your answer now, if you please.”

True silence is the absolute absence of sound: what follows strictly is not that. Kurusu faces away and doesn’t immediately respond, his phone whispering between his fingers. Goro wants to smash the damned thing to pieces.

The very moment Goro thinks that, Kurusu stills.

“You looked upset yesterday,” he says, his tone conversational as he shifts in his seat and tucks his phone away. “What’s the expression? ‘Green around the gills’? Are you a fish, Akechi?”

Goro pauses, midstep on a metaphorical climb. “Excuse me?”

Kurusu straightens in his seat and, finally, faces forward. His glasses are gone, but their absence must present no handicap for the scapular clarity of his gaze—

_slate grey, storm grey_

—peeling the onion-layers of his flesh away like—

_blade-of-a-hunter’s-knife-grey_

—something tight and sharp gutting him, a fishhook in his belly—

_so sharp they could cut you_

The resin gaston he’d thought firmly in his grip shifts—to an edge, a sidepull, a jug, a crimp, an underling—before shattering into pieces.

Kurusu continues on, mercilessly. “You’re so ice-cold that I’ve gotta admit—it’s surprising you’d get upset seeing a girl jump to her death.”

Goro flinches. This has gone on _long enough_.

“That one hit home, huh? Guess there’s a person in there after all.”

Goro pushes himself up to his full height and prowls the perimeter of the room to advance on Kurusu Akira like a bird of prey—circling, circling. “How callous of you,” he says lightly, “to mock a fellow student’s suffering. You understand, of course, that I’m beholden to tell the principal of your admission.”

_When Goro was six years old, one of the women his mother worked with was hurt._

_Broken nose, bloody lip; bad trick._

“Sure,” Kurusu says, still so damnably unshaken. Still watching him with paring knives for eyes. “First, though, I’m assuming he knows what’s going on here and just doesn’t care. The real question is: do you?”

_Mama, he’d asked, why don’t you ever ask for help?_

Goro stares. “Do I what?”

_That’s the million dollar question, Gocchan._

Two tungsten needles stare back. “Do you know that the gym teacher is a sexual predator? Or do you just not care?”

_The twenty-four karat answer is this: when women ask for help, no one ever listens._

“Fuck you.” The invective escapes his mouth before he can slap both hands over it. The rage he normally keeps coiled beneath his diaphragm, loose and placated and easy, howls forth like a baying hound. “ _Fuck_ you. You piece of shit, who do you think you’re talking to like that? I will _bury_ you. I will drop your body in the Sumida, you—”

“Uh-oh,” Kurusu intones, his voice a singsong, as he pulls his phone back out of his pocket. “You’re on candid camera.”

He holds up his phone to display the screen: a broad black rectangle with a giant red circle at the center. A white square in the middle of the circle. Kurusu taps the circle and the square is replaced by an equilateral triangle, rotated ninety degrees. Stop turning into play.

A _recording_ app?

“I wonder what other people would say if they heard you like this.” Kurusu fiddles with his phone until its speaker spits out noise: _—ing to like that? I will_ bury _you. I will drop your body in the Sumida, you—_

Static.

Kurusu was _recording_ him?

“Oops,” Kurusu says as he holds his camera up again, screen facing in Goro’s direction. His finger taps an icon on the screen; a window opens at the forefront of the display.

[ _Upload in progress . . ._ ]

He’s uploading the file.

He’s uploading the file _to the fucking cloud_.

“Bad time to mention I was in A/V club for half a year in middle school?” Kurusu asks. “Yes, no, maybe?”

Goro’s fingers curl, scrabbling for whatever tool of violence might be in reach. He squeezes them into hard fists and meets Kurusu’s tungsten stare with a murderous one of his own.

This _bitch_.

“Hey, senpai,” Kurusu says, _sonata-allegro_. “Wanna make a deal?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *** Content warning is for Shiho's attempted suicide, more explicit references to Goro's mother's suicide, and Kamoshida's behavior and treatment of Shiho (sexual assault) and Ann (stalking and sexual harassment, including heavily implied lewd text messages, threats, photos). ***
> 
> That's right, gals and pals. It's Blackmail Part 2: Electric Boogaloo. No better way to start a relationship.
> 
> Thank you for reading! If you've enjoyed it, please leave a comment below. (⑅ ॣ•͈ᴗ•͈ ॣ)*✲ﾟ*｡⋆♡
> 
> Some culture/research notes:  
> \- The chapter title, Alekhine's gun, is the name of a chess move made famous by former world champion Alexander Alekhine. It involves lining up a queen behind two rooks in what's supposed to be some kind of chessy one-two-fuck-you. The title holds no specific meaning in the context of the fic other than I thought it sounded banger in contrast to the title of the last chapter.   
> \- _kissaten _is a specific type of coffee shop in Japan, distinguishable from a café. they're very retro  
>  \- _uwabaki_ are the slipper-shoes students wear inside schools, generally made of white canvas  
> \- Literally the only reason Ann brings Akira to a cafe is a private joke between me and me making fun of me for not realizing until this year that he brings her to a _Big Bang Burger_ for her emotional sob in the game  
> \- Gastons, edges, sidepulls, jugs, crimps, and underlings are types of handholds in indoor rock climbing! Why yes I _did_ spend half an hour googling bouldering to write one sentence, I am totally normal!  
> \- If I seem to jump back and forth between using deliberate Japanese references to using Americanisms—sometimes my brain just can't figure out how to make the sentence work with the appropriate word__


End file.
